Helen chewed on her lip some more. Uh, no, since she’d sucker punched Number Nine and had distracted everybody instead.
“We didn’t have any problem with her decision,” Jed replied enigmatically.
Helen frowned. They didn’t? Or was her monitor just being protective of her?
“You should assess the damage at your end,” Jed continued.
“All damage control is our business, Jed,” the woman said smoothly, “even yours.”
“There’s nothing going on at my end that’s of any danger to my people,” Jed said. “As long as you can keep those eight other departments off our backs, we’ll find those weapons. I’m not comfortable about their being constantly updated on the operations.”
“They all have a hand in creating your supersoldier-spy, Agent McNeil,” the man pointed out. “A little feedback can’t hurt.”
“It irks them that they lost.” He paused. “To a woman. And it irks them that she belongs to me.”
“To COS Command,” the woman corrected. There was another pause, then the woman pressed, “She’s COS Command’s, right?”
“She’s an independent contractor,” Jed said, “who’s agreed to work with the Viruses. I’m her monitor and trainer. Therefore, she’s mine.”
“That’s a very strange way of looking at it since she signed the contract with COS Command,” the woman pointed out.
“Read the contract,” Jed said softly.
“I think I will.”
Helen looked on with interest, ignoring the way her heart started beating faster at Jed’s words. He said it! She’d wanted to hear him say he was her monitor and trainer. Yet, something in his voice suggested there was more. She wasn’t sure what was happening but her being at CCC looked to be more interesting than a mere contract job. Now she wanted to reread her contract too.
“Macedonia for you next, then,” the man said, changing the subject.
Jed nodded. “Yes.” He leaned forward and pressed some buttons on the panel. “Listen to this uplink from Hawk McMillan, our asset there.”
One of the earphones started blinking and Helen picked them up and inserted the buds into her ears.
“It’s partly in Serbian,” Jed’s voice came on over the channel. “He’s talking to Dragan Dilaver. Eight Ball is providing the translated transcript on your screen now. Read the highlighted parts as you listen to the conversation.”
Helen looked at the screen to her left as a word processing document appeared. Without waiting, she used the mouse to click on the start window prompter. She was getting the hang of this debriefing business.
Two men were speaking in the recording, sometimes in English, sometimes in Serbian. She knew that Dragan Dilaver was a notorious drug- and human-trafficker in Macedonia. It was easy to pick out his gravelly voice as he spoke with the undercover American. She wasn’t particularly good at Serbian, but it was similar enough to Russian in parts that she caught the gist of the conversation. Weapons, women, dangerous liaisons. She followed the scrolling text on the screen, reading the parts that were highlighted as she listened in.
“Your government’s sneaky, Hawk. They negotiated to have the KLA take over what’s left of Yugoslavia and they make drops in big crates called ‘Relief Aid’. Some of these crates are actually filled with weapons and they’re dropped at specific locations for me.”
“How did they choose you? Do you have a direct line to the U.S. Armory? Come on, Dilaver. Don’t tell me you’re an agent for the American government.”
“No, you have it backwards. I have an agent in the United States...” Male laughter.
“Your aunt?”
“She’s high level, got the authority to approve shipments or something... She said there’s some problem moving the weapons from her end right now and she might need my help. What do you say, Hawk? Help me out?”
Eight Ball interrupted in the ear phone, “End of snippet One.”
Helen pulled out the buds and returned her attention to the big overhead screens. The man appeared to be talking to someone off-screen with his mic off. The woman was taking notes. Jed remained silent, apparently waiting.
While he waited, Helen mulled over the recorded conversation. That was probably the operation the commandos had been talking about in the meeting she’d interrupted. From what she could gather, there was a list somewhere with some big important weapons that were missing. Jed and his men’s task was to find and retrieve them. One of them was the decoder she’d helped locate recently. The other was this shipment in Macedonia. She frowned. Dropped by the CIA themselves? Whoa. She’d missed that part while watching the nightly news.
The man shifted his gaze back to the camera. “We’ll work on the identity of the female relative.”
Jed nodded. “Affirmative. Easier at your end. Get Ricardo Harden from TIARA in on it. He has resources inside the CIA.”
